Rebin Shah, alias Rebstar, had only recently arrived in New York from his homeland Sweden when we sat down in a Financial District high-rise to discuss his transatlantic music career and diverse other projects. The rapper-cum-entrepreneur had watched the recent release Steve Jobs, in which Michael Fassbender stars as the titular
Since his 2008 single "Without You," featuring Trey Songz, took off on local airwaves, Shah has worked with such names as Drake (who he contacted via Myspace before So Far Gone had been released), Boi-1da and T-Minus. He's part of a burgeoning Swedish rap scene in Malmo — though he's quick to dismiss the idea that Swedish rap is just the latest music trend. Swedish artists, several under the auspices of Shah's boutique music label Today is Vintage, have prepared to make its transition to North America — in part by recruiting North American artists to Malmo. His labelmate Saint was recently featured on Vice's Noisey vertical, while another Vintage artist, Kállay Saunders, has met success on the Hungarian charts. This past weekend, Rebstar announced he'll play five sets at South by Southwest later this month, and his debut full-length album, Girls Like Nicole, is slated for a late-spring release date.
Photo: Jesper Berg
Though Shah now identifies as an artist, over the past decade he's had a hand in a number of business-minded projects, which run the gamut from making cold-calls for a hedge fund to starting a B2B breakfast catering service in Malmo, the Swedish town where he grew up and currently resides. And even on the music side, Shah has taken an entrepreneurial route: He began a music label called 2Fresh in 2008 ("My intention was never to start a label. I just had a little collective of artists and other creative people," he said. "We made it, like, a music hub in the city.") and then another called Today is Vintage in 2012, with which he's still affiliated.
Shah still remembers in vivid detail when he first heard Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP. He was 10 years old — maybe nine — and a friend called him at home. "That was, like, back when you had phones with cords," he clarified. "There were no wireless phones." Shah had to hear this track, his friend insisted, proceeding to play "Kill You," the record's second track, over the phone.
But it wasn't till he was 15 or 16 that he began writing his own music, putting lyrics to preexisting tracks by the likes of Tupac. (He later re-recorded a Lil Kim track, a Swedish-language version of "Lighters Up" — which he confessed he hopes no one tracks down.) Yet Shah didn't set out to become a musician — his business efforts seem to have come more naturally, and more prolifically, than his compositions. Attending an international school in his hometown of Malmo, Sweden, he pursued a fairly traditional track. (He hails from the same neighborhood, Rosengard, as famed soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimovic.) His senior year of high school, he received an unconditional acceptance to the University of Aberdeen in Scotland to study law.
"It just felt natural to me," he explained. "I found it interesting how you could use your words to convince people to do something. ... It's not just what you say, it's your body language." He lasted just a year in Scotland — commuting back and forth between his hometown and the university — before returning to Malmo full-time to live with his father and work at a hedge fund making cold calls and scheduling client meetings. His recollections of this short-lived job (he worked at the hedge fund for approximately two weeks) echo those of law school: The work hinged on communicating convincingly and persuasively.
Shah left the hedge fund job to become an independent contractor helping the company recruit new clients online. "Advertise it on the right platforms," he explains of the venture, "and people will come to you. Give them some incentive."
This latest gig floundered after approximately a month, yet over the course of our conversation Shah gave the impression of a man who's never at a loss for the next project to pursue. In 2012, he started a breakfast delivery service called Breakfast At Work — precisely what it sounds like — with a childhood acquaintance who had asked Shah whether he had any business concepts knocking around. "We were just brainstorming ideas," he says, "just for the hell of it, and I was like, 'I don't know, companies need breakfast.'" Thus Breakfast At Work was born.
As we spoke, Shah insisted several times that he doesn't have a grand scheme; all the diverse strands of his career might be a function of being considered the so-called 'ideas guy' among his friends and acquaintances rather than any overarching design. When he becomes involved with an endeavor, he finds that those around him often look to him for guidance. This was the case for enterprises like 2Fresh, for which he became "defacto leader," Today is Vintage and the informal artists' collectives that he led in the interim. It might even be the case for Breakfast At Work, though he's since distanced himself due to his obligations with Today is Vintage, which now counts six artists on its roster.
Yet he also notes, "I'm very calculated in what I do." (A statement that would seem to conflict with Shah's admission that he didn't formerly "believe in" meetings, an issue on which he's only recently come around.) It's not just happenstance that Rebstar the rapper has become involved in so many business-minded projects; as he's realized the stakes of his various ventures, he has become more committed to structure and planning.
Shah uses the word "artist" advisedly — he doesn't consider himself a rapper, precisely, but nor does he consider other musicians like Aretha Franklin, Outkast or Kanye West to be only singers or rappers. He delivers pearls of wisdom with a laugh (he's good-humored even when his inner Steve Jobs shows through), casually dropping bits of advice: "Just work. Don't put all these boundaries up for yourself — just create." He's as exactly in his lyrical decisions as those of branding (at one point, he mentioned the challenges of using slang in lieu of proper grammar). Rebstar is impossible to pigeonhole because the artist persona is contiguous with Shah himself, and because his artistry is inseparable from his entrepreneurial ethos.
Of the distinction between Rebin Shah and his Rebstar alter-ego, he noted: "At the end of the day, I don't see separation at all. The two are one."
"I used to separate them," he recalled. "There were things that I would want to say that I wouldn't. ... And I've just let that go. Either they like Rebstar or they don't. Can't do much about it."
